classical music

On Saturday, March 19, 2016 at 7:30 PM, the Albany Symphony will perform a concert featuring masterpieces by Vivaldi and Samuel Barber, as well as new and recent works by six innovative young composers.

Curated by the Sleeping Giant Composer Collective, To Walk With Giants features three re-workings of Mozart’s piano concerto movements and Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in C Major, performed by Concert Master Jill Levy and encapsulated within Robert Honstein’s orchestral suite, Night Scenes from the Ospedale.

In addition, the orchestra will perform a modern masterpiece, Ingram Marshall’s Kingdom Come. It is an innovative program to be presented at the historic Palace Theatre in downtown Albany.

To tell us more we welcome Albany Symphony Orchestra maestro, David Alan Miller along with composer and pianist Timo Andres.

In this week’s Classical Music According to Yehuda, Alan Chartock and Yehuda Hanani discuss other the musical gene in terms of Johann Sebastian Bach’s family, hearing a selection from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Concerto in D Minor.

Yehuda’s Close Encounters with Music series in Great Barrington, MA will present a program entitled “J.S. BACH & SONS Legitimate and Otherwise" on Saturday, March 19.

The Albany Symphony will present a thrilling program of Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture, Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, “The Great,” and the world premiere of “Three Manhattan Bridges,” a major new work by Michael Torke featuring piano soloist Joyce Yang, in concerts at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

"Three Manhattan Bridges" was commissioned by the Albany Symphony and written expressly for Yang, Torke’s favorite pianist. The work was inspired by Torke’s adopted home, New York City. Its three movements are: “George Washington Bridge,” “Queensboro Bridge,” and “Brooklyn Bridge.”

To tell us more we welcome Albany Symphony Orchestra maestro, David Alan Miller and composer Michael Torke.

Jan Allen Pfeifer lives and writes in Woodstock, New York. She is a native of Louisville KY.

Classical Music is Playing

Classical music is playing in the bedroom where my father is dying. I sit alone, next to him. In this liminal space, the music is a soothing companion for both of us. It knows its way.

As I listen, I am transported back to grade school and field trips to Louisville Gardens for orchestra concerts. An amazing feat, moving hundreds of school children downtown like a conveyer belt from all parts of the city, the only common denominator being our grade and the yellow school buses that brought us. Each bus arrives and empties their charges onto Walnut Street in clockwork fashion. Our own trip is short, the hard green vinyl seats still cold against our dangling bare legs. Some of the girls hold hands, the warm considerations of best friends.